


May I Have This Dance?

by sabaceanbabe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Odesta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5637991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/pseuds/sabaceanbabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finnick gives Annie a surprise birthday party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May I Have This Dance?

Annie finds the envelope on the porch outside the back door when she goes out one bright morning for a walk on the beach. Finnick is out fishing with his father and uncles and won’t be back until late, but that’s not so bad. At least he’s not in the Capitol over her birthday this year.

Bending at the waist, she catches a fingernail under a corner of the envelope and flips it up so she can grab it. It’s clearly marked “Miss Annie Cresta” in Finnick’s crabby handwriting. Although clearly might be a bit of an overstatement, she thinks as she smiles. He likes to claim his writing is stylistic, but the reality is it’s a bit of a mess.

She slips a finger under the flap and slowly works it open. It’s not anything like the cream and blue envelopes the president sends. She’s pretty sure Finnick made it himself, slightly lopsided and with paper smeared with vaguely flower-shaped smears of color. The paper inside it matches perfectly, and the thought of Finnick making her something so pretty but so simple brings tears to her eyes.

“Miss Annie Cresta, you are cordially invited to join Mister Finnick Odair for dinner and dancing in honor of the anniversary of your birth, a day that should be a national holiday, if there were any justice in the world…”

There’s no signature, but she has no doubt who left it. Along with the invitation are instructions to look in their closet to the far right in the back for what to wear and a hand-drawn map to the dock with an arrow pointing toward the slip where Martin Perch keeps his yacht docked. Annie raises one dark eyebrow at that. Still smiling, she goes back inside to see what’s waiting for her in the closet.

*

The sun just kisses the horizon on its way back into the sea when Annie walks out the back door and across the sand to the docks. The dress Finnick left for her swirls around her ankles with every step. The breeze picks up tendrils of her hair to tickle her neck and shoulders. The mare’s tail clouds pick up the light from the setting sun to set the sky ablaze, the golds and oranges and reds matching the shimmering colors in the silk she wears. She didn’t bother with shoes - the day was unseasonably warm for March and the evening promises that the night to come will feel as much like summer as the fading day.

Climbing the stairs to the raised dock, she sees the yacht rocking gently, warm light escaping from the rooms below. Music drifts to her from the open portholes, a lively, happy tune that makes her want to dance, so she does, twirling her way across the dock and sending the skirt of the soft dress swinging wildly around her legs, though she’s careful to not slide too much on the old, weathered wood. She doesn’t want any splinters that might keep her from dancing with Finnick.

When she finally reaches the yacht, she lifts the hem of her dress and runs up the walkway onto the polished wooden deck. “Hello!” she calls. “Finnick?”

There’s no answer but the music and she walks about for a bit topside, just to see what she can see, quickly gaining her sea legs in the process. Then, humming along with the tune that has to be nearing its end, Annie goes down the stairs to the interior, lit up with dozens of candles in all the colors of the rainbow. Thick and thin, tall and short, some have been burning for some time, others only for a few minutes.

Clapping her hands and laughing with delight, she asks, even though Finnick is nowhere in sight, “Did you do all this yourself?”

The happy tune ends and another begins, this one more sweeping and epic in feel, slower in tempo. She can feel him come up behind her, although he doesn’t touch her.

“Miss Cresta, may I have this dance?”

She turns to find him wearing stark black and crisp white, his longish bronze hair loose. Placing her hand in his, he pulls her into his arms and into a waltz. Spinning around the small space, she’s never felt more in love with him than in that moment, everything in the room, the borrowed boat, put together to please her. The specter of the Games, for once in their lives, is as far away as it can be as they dance from one song to the next to the next to the next.

Eventually, breathless as much with laughter as exertion, Finnick leads Annie to another tiny but elegant room and a table for two. There are two glasses of wine and two pearly white candles dancing attendance around a vase of deep pink and white lilies. Sneaking into the little dining nook from the galley is a mouthwatering scent of roasting garlic and tomatoes.

“Hungry?” he asks.

“I am now,” she replies.

“Hold that thought,” he tells her and slips away into the galley. He comes back a moment later with a tray in his gloved hands, which he sets down on a metal stand in between the candles and wine glasses.

Annie claps her hands again. “Pizza?”

Grinning, he tells her, “I made it myself.” But then he looks a little guilty and continues, “No. That’s a lie. Mags put it together for me. I just baked it.”

“Well you did a good job, Mister Odair.”

With the music still playing in the other room, they eat their pizza and drink their wine and they talk. They talk of silly things, inconsequential things. Anything and everything that comes to their minds, but never a word of anything ugly - and there is so much ugliness in their lives - that might taint her birthday, the first one he’s been home to share with her in the four years they’ve been together.

One by one the candles go out until only a handful remain. The sky outside is dark and full of stars. Finnick blows out the last few candles and joins Annie on the deck. She shivers, the temperature still warm for March but cool for the light dress she wears.

Suddenly a weight drops onto her shoulders, the cloth soft and instantly warm. “Happy birthday, mi Corazon,” Finnick whispers into her ear and she shivers again, but not with any chill. “I have shoes for you, too.” He laughs at the look that must be on her face and scoops up a pair of beach shoes, tossing them to her.

Catching them, she says, “You know me so well.”

They leave the yacht and the dock behind, slipping a little as they walk across the beach toward the house they share, arms around each other’s waists. Annie realizes as she walks side-by-side with this man, there’s no place else she’d rather be.

“I love you, Finnick Odair.”

Without pausing, he leans down to kiss the top of her head. “I love you more.”


End file.
